Stephan Pastis's Blog, page 23

Call Me Nostrapastis

Four years ago, in February, 2006, I wrote an introduction for my treasury, "Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My", in which I discussed my inability to predict whether a given strip I write will be liked or not.  I added, "I could better predict the winner of the 2010 Super Bowl than I could the funniness factor of an unpublished Pearls strip."

And then I added a footnote.  I'll let you look at it yourself.   It's at the bottom of the page.

I suppose there are a whole host of possible...

A Brief Video of How I Spend My Free Time

Just click HERE.

Shotgun Blues; Honeymoon of the Damned, Part Five

When you're waiting in line in America, and your wife kicks a man in the back, you've got trouble.  In Greece, it's called "being in line."

So the man that Staci kicked did nothing.  He barely looked back at us.

It was tempting to start punching him in the back of the head, just to see how far we could push it, but our boat for Santorini arrived.

When we docked in Santorini, the boat was greeted by a massive swarm of people.  And I mean massive.  Think United Nations rice drop in Chad, but not...

A Day in the Life of a Cartoonist

Just click HERE to see.

Do You Do This Too?

The top of a Kleenex box is perforated.  You have to punch out the perforated part to get to the Kleenex.

When I do it, I form my hand so that it looks like the head of a snake and strike at it like I'm killing a mongoose.

I can't be the only one.

When Kids' Sports Stop Being About Positive Reinforcement, We All Lose

My twelve-year-old son's basketball coach asked if I could help during practice by scrimmaging with the kids.  I was sitting in the bleachers at the time, but I did have on shorts and tennis shoes, so I said yes.

"Just stand there with your arms up and make them go around you," he said, "I just want them to get a feel for playing against taller guys."

So I stood there.  I'm 6′ 1″ tall, so it wasn't hard to be a presence in the key.

That's when a 4′ 6″ kid tried to make a layup around me.

I...

No Boat; Honeymoon of the Damned, Part Four

It is the summer of 1993.  I am in Athens on my honeymoon with my lovely bride.

Who is crying in a travel agency.

She is crying because she has been trying to get us two flights home so we can cut our honeymoon short.  But she has just found out that changing the flights costs a lot of money.  Which we don't have.

So we are stuck in Greece.

Tip No. 14 About Honeymoons:   It is  bad when they feel like hostage situations.

So I call an audible.  I tell her we're going to Santorini.  It's got...

Writing the Strip Can Be Hazardous to Your Social Life

Sometimes when I write the strip, I unconsciously mouth the words the characters are saying and make some of their facial expressions.

Yesterday, I wrote the strip in a coffee shop I had never been to before in St. Helena, California, which is in Napa Valley.

In one of the strips I wrote, Goat grimaces at Rat, showing all of his clenched teeth.

As I was writing it, I lifted my head from the page and just happened to catch the eye of the woman at the table directly in front of me, who smiled and...

On the Transitory Nature of Art

Yesterday, I bought 10 Vitamin Waters and a bunch of Power Bars from the grocery store.

Rather than casually tossing them on the checkout conveyor belt like everyone else does, I thought I'd do something special.

So I arranged the 10 Vitamin Waters in a circle.

Then I layed Power Bars atop them, each spanning from the top of one bottle to the next.

Now it was no longer a bunch of random groceries.

It was Stonehenge.

When the grocery store clerk saw it, she just stared at it.  Then she looked up at...

Greece is Bugging Me Already: Honeymoon of the Damned, Part Three.

The boat stopped at Igoumenitsa.  It's a town in the far northwest of Greece, on the border of Albania.

And despite its location on the border, I am guessing it has never been the subject of a border dispute.  Because if it was, it would go like this:

Albania:  "You take it."

Greece:  "No, you take it."

And it's a town that didn't look like it got a lot of tourists.  I say that because when we got off the boat, the locals took pictures of us, apparently to memorialize the day back in 1993 when...